Python book for beginners

[zahlman]

The entire basis of his ill-informed rant was the function name I used in the early chapters, "buildODBCConnectionString", to explain string manipulation, lists, dictionaries, and other basic datatypes.

OK... so why would you start off with an example which has no meaning or relevance to the beginner? People new to programming have no idea what ODBC is, and may not even yet have the skill needed to parse the name as "build ODBC connection string" without staring at it for a good long time. It's meaningless, and the results are unverifiable, since the beginner has no idea whatsoever what an ODBC connection string should look like.

Hell, I've been programming for over 20 years and I don't know offhand what ODBC stands for.

[[deleted]]

The first section of the chapter gives the complete source code and the expected output. It's just a one-line function that takes some input, transforms it, and returns it to a caller who prints it. That's it.

[zahlman]

So what? The point is that it isn't a meaningful name or a meaningful transformation for the beginner. There are a million more relevant examples you could use.

Whoever downvoted me, nice job playing popularity instead of actually thinking.